Open Journal Systems at the Victoria University of Wellington Library
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A Principled Approach to Defamation Claims in New Zealand: Untangling the Harm Threshold
Get PDFThe threshold requirement of reputational harm for bringing a defamation claim needs clarification. Although recent case law shows that a threshold exists, precedents conflict as to what exactly the threshold requires, and who bears the burden of proof. There is further judicial disagreement on whether the principle that defamation claims can be struck out if no real and substantial tort has been committed, the Jameel principle, applies in New Zealand. This article suggests that both the harm threshold (more accurately described as a ''tendency to cause harm'' threshold, as it does not require proof of actual harm) and the Jameel principle have a valuable place in New Zealand's defamation law and their application requires endorsement and clarification at appellate level. Further, this article highlights that the principles are conceptually distinct and their fusion is undesirable in New Zealand
Legal Education: Why Should a Lawyer Study Arts in a University?
Get PDFThis article is a response to the report of the Committee of the Law Society recommending a reduction of the number of arts units from five to three. The author argues that the United States had increased arts education requirements for law students and New Zealand should follow suit. First, Dunham argues that an arts education provides professional pride as it allows for a broader scope of knowledge, understanding, and wise judgment. Secondly, he argues that an arts education safeguards the public by providing the lawyer with a broader understanding of human values and cultures which they should seek to obey. Finally, the author argues that an arts education is necessary for the competence of all lawyers by providing varied perspectives.  
A Lost Opportunity? Omission of the Illusory Trust Doctrine from the Trusts Act 2019
Get PDFThis article considers the role of the illusory trust doctrine in New Zealand. It argues that the illusory trust doctrine should be incorporated into the Trusts Act 2019. Incorporating the illusory trust will enhance clarity in New Zealand's law of trusts by providing the courts with a conceptually coherent method to assess the permissible boundaries of the trust. This article explores the differing views of illusory trusts in the context of the Trusts Act and in light of policy concerns. The "no meaningful accountability" view of illusory trusts is identified as the best formulation of the doctrine for incorporation into the Trusts Act. Importantly, the no meaningful accountability view does not jeopardise discretionary family trusts, which have social and economic significance. The author goes further by drafting a tentative provision for incorporation in the Trusts Act. The provision is then applied to the nefarious Clayton v Clayton trust and a typical, discretionary family trust. This application demonstrates that the provision will only catch the most nefarious Clayton-type trusts, thus preserving discretionary family trusts
A Conversation with the Karrabing Film Collective
Get PDFThis piece is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation with members of the Karrabing Film Collective – Lorraine Lane, Linda Yarrowin, Cecilia Lewis, Sandra Yarrowin, and anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli – interviewed by anthropologists Melinda Hinkson and David Boarder Giles. The Karrabing Film Collective are a community of Indigenous Australians and their whitefella collaborators who make films that analyse and represent their contemporary lives and also keep their country alive by acting on it. This conversation appeared first as Episode Eighteen of Conversations in Anthropology@Deakin, a podcast about ‘life, the universe, and anthropology’ based at Deakin University and produced by Giles and Timothy Neale, with support from the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University, and in association with the American Anthropological Association
Performing Embodied Translations: Decolonizing Methodologies of Knowing and Being
Get PDFThis performance and transcript emerge from a collaborative journey that grapples with what it might mean to agitate dominant pedagogical and methodological conventions of Eurocentric Angophone academia. Together, we perform an argument and a search: for multiple entry points into decolonizing feminisms; for multiple modes of knowing and being that can interrupt and challenge the epistemes that are rooted in thoughts and practices of colonialism and coloniality; for interrogating the dominant politics of citation that often operate in academic practices in disembodied ways. We search for a politics of knowing that is firmly rooted in relationalities where power and authority can be shared across uneven and unequal locations and languages. We invite you to step into the spaces that we have started imagining here and push all of our collective conversations and imaginations further, beyond the silos that cage us in our disciplined modes of thinking, writing, arguing, and dreaming
Mauricio López Langenbach reviews El Jesús Maorí (Baxter-Harris)
No full textMauricio López Langenbach reviews El Jesús Maorí (Baxter-Harris
Does Public Transparency and Accountability Impact Sustainable Development Goals? A Case Study of Selected African Countries
Get PDFPurpose: This study examines the impact of public transparency and accountability on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of selected African countries for the period from 2016 to 2017.
Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts hierarchical regression method to determine the impact of public transparency and accountability on SDG performance in Africa. The study examined ten (10) African countries selected randomly from each of the different geographical zones. Two countries from each geographical zones; Nigeria and Ghana from West Africa region, Cameroon and Gabon from Central Africa region, Kenya and Uganda from East Africa region, Egypt and Morocco from North Africa region, South Africa and Zambia from the South African region. SDG was the dependent variable, measured through Sustainable Development Goal Index (SDGI) while independent variables which are public transparency and accountability were measured using Corruption Perception Index (CPI) and Accountability Index (AI) while the study controlled for other variables.
Findings: The empirical evidence presents mixed results, the finding shows that public transparency (CPI) is positively and significantly related with SDG performance while accountability (AI) presents a negative and insignificantly relationship with SDG performance for selected African countries. Also, the findings reveal that other variables such as global competitiveness index (GCI), global peace index (GPI), human development index (HDI) present a negative and insignificant relationship with SDG performance while world governance index (WGI) and environmental performance index (EPI) reveals a positive and significant relationship with SDG performance. The findings also observed that the inclusion of the control variables increased the adjusted r2 from 51% to 62%.
Practical Implications: This study’s findings call for improved public transparency, strong institutional framework, improved advocacy for good governance, holding both private and public institutions accountable for their actions. Research Limitation: The study was limited by sample size which resulted in only 20 observations. It also suffers from the limitation of robustness in the empirical result. However, it sets the tone for future empirical research on the subject matter.
Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study that examined public transparency and accountability within the context of achieving SDG in Africa. The study, therefore, contributes to growing literature in the area of accounting, accountability, and SDG research in Africa
Private Prosecutions in New Zealand - A Public Concern?
Get PDFThis article evaluates whether private prosecutions remain a safe and useful mechanism in the modern New Zealand criminal justice system. Private prosecutions are an important constitutional safeguard against state inertia, incompetence and bias and recent legislative reforms have strengthened the judiciary's ability to ensure this mechanism is not misused. Despite this, concerns remain. This article provides an overview of private prosecutions and justification for their continued existence, outlines the current procedure for those prosecutions and explores remaining concerns with this mechanism. Ultimately, while the status quo of private prosecutions remains adequate, a greater alignment of the theoretical and practical purposes of private prosecutions would be beneficial. Further normalisation and commercialisation of private prosecutions is undesirable and the effectiveness of these prosecutions as a "safeguard" is questionable given the considerable financial and investigative burdens faced by applicants. 
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